Jihad without borders

Click photo to download. Caption: The World Trade Center towers up in smoke on Sept. 11, 2001. Before the 9/11 attack, al-Qaida began seducing jihadist organizations from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh to join Osama bin Laden. But nobody understood what was about to happen, writes columnist Boaz Bismuth. Credit: Michael Foran via Wikimedia Commons.

In Kenya, a
Somalia-based, al-Qaida-linked rebel group, al-Shabab, burst into Nairobi’s
Westgate shopping mall and murdered dozens of victims in cold blood. In
Nigeria, at least 160 people were massacred in two attacks by the radical Islamist
organization Boko Haram. In Pakistan, a terrorist blew himself up outside a
church in the city of Peshawar, killing more than 80 members of Pakistan’s
Christian minority.

In Israel,
terror struck as well. Over the holiday of Sukkot, two soldiers paid with their
lives. IDF Sgt. Gal (Gavriel) Kobi took a single lethal bullet to his neck in
Hebron. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sgt. Tomer Hazan was murdered by his
Palestinian host, Nidal Amar. During the same week, Iran, a country that
supports and finances terrorism, sent its president to the U.N. General
Assembly as if he were a beacon of peace.

The attack in
Kenya should ring alarm bells for the world. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but
al-Qaida and its satellite organizations are alive and kicking. There is
something very symbolic about the fact that Kenya is once again the target of a
terror attack. This captivating country, so beloved of tourists, was the target
of an attack in 1998 that served as a harbinger of the global terrorism we have
experienced since the twin towers attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

The 1998 attack
in Kenya was the first salvo in a global terror war that has been raging for
more than a decade, a war that affects many countries, and creates strange
alliances, even between countries that don’t have diplomatic relations.

On Aug. 7, 1998
at 10:40 a.m., a loud explosion was heard in central Nairobi coming from the
direction of the U.S. Embassy. At almost the same time, a near identical
explosion occurred near the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A total of
213 people were killed and 4,000 were injured in Nairobi on that day. The two
truck-bomb explosions were the starting signal of al-Qaida’s war on the West as
a whole, and the U.S. in particular.

Still, no one
saw the (bloody) writing on the wall. In Europe, anyone speaking of global
terrorism was considered paranoid. University students turned out theses on the
theme of tolerance, merely repressing the danger. They explained that terrorism
is the weapon of the weak, because what other choice do weak people have? No
one believed that within a few years, those same jihadists would operate in
Madrid, London and Toulouse.

Six months
earlier, in February 1998, bin Laden, from his lair in Afghanistan, had
declared the establishment of a World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and
Crusaders. This was bin Laden’s declaration of war against the infidels. Even
before the 9/11 attack, al-Qaida began seducing jihadist organizations from
Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh to join him. But nobody understood what was
about to happen.

The roots of
terror

Before the 9/11
attacks, al-Qaida had sent a clear signal in October 2000. Two terrorists in a
small boat blew themselves up next to the USS Cole destroyer, anchored in
Yemen. Analysts in the U.S. said at the time that the attack was in response to
unrest in the Palestinian territories. The attack coincided with the start of
the Second Intifada, and there were many Palestinian and pro-Palestinian
activists in Yemen at the time.

U.S. President Bill
Clinton even said on the morning of the attack, “If [the terrorists’] intention
was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the Middle
East, they will fail utterly.” That statement proved inaccurate, to say the
least.

In 2008, Barack
Obama entered the White House, with the promise of ending America’s wars
abroad. With a Nobel Prize in his pocket, he brought the troops home from Iraq
and established a target date (2014) for ending the war in Afghanistan. In a
speech to the nation last February, Obama even explained how America had
overcome al-Qaida, following the killing of bin Laden, on his watch.

The main message
Obama wished to transmit was that Washington’s priorities are changing. The
Middle East is out, Asia and the Pacific are in. But ironically, the attack on
Nairobi brought Obama back to his roots—politically and personally.

In a recent column
in USA Today, journalist and novelist
Louise Branson wrote that Obama, whose father was born in Nairobi, should
support Kenya’s efforts to battle terrorism and visit Kenya as a sign of
solidarity.

“After 9/11, the
French newspaper Le Monde famously
carried a headline: We Are All Americans,” Branson wrote. “After the Nairobi
attack, the message should be ‘We Are All Kenyans.’ Not just in our sympathy.
But also in going all out to prevent another terrorist attack.”

Power games

Modern terrorism
is a big problem for the countries where it operates. It hurts not only their
security and citizens, but also their economies. Terror organizations—like
al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) in
western Africa, and even terror groups in the Sinai Peninsula—all engage in criminal
activity to finance their activity. AQMI terrorists, for instance, specialize
in smuggling cigarettes and alcohol via the Sahara desert. Kenya has added
al-Shabab to its list of organized crime groups in the country.

Kenyan President
Uhuru Kenyatta admitted that his country is getting help from “friendly
countries.” Israel was the first country mentioned as such, after it provided
logistical assistance with the Nairobi hostage crisis, advising the Kenyan
government.

Israel is a
leader in the global terror war, but the diplomatic situation does not allow
its involvement to be out in the open. Senior Israeli intelligence officers
describe how in the 1990s, they warned friendly countries about the coming
global jihad and were repeatedly rebuffed.

In any case,
Jerusalem understood even then that the world is changing, that Israel needs
partners. For this reason, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government
worked to forge new alliances and to strengthen ties with friendly nations in
Africa, like Uganda and Kenya.

What Israel,
Kenya and Uganda have in common is the problem of nonfriendly neighboring
countries. Somalia, a member of the Arab League, has become a problem for other
countries in the region. Some even see it as a new Afghanistan, because it
lacks a centralized government that can force its authority on all the factions
in its territory.

A prize for
destruction

Terrorism cannot
defeat the West, but it can definitely disrupt daily life, and we must concede
that over the last decade it has not done a bad job of it. Witness the security
checks before boarding airplanes or at the entrances to malls.

The Muslim world
suffers from jihadist organizations, which make them look bad, but nevertheless
they oppose those who seek to fight terror. Witness the double game played by
Saudi Arabia.

Terror can
destroy a country, especially one that lacks many resources and whose situation
is sensitive. This is what is happening in Mauritania, where I served as
Israel’s ambassador for four years. In the past, this western African country
attracted tourists and even the prestigious Paris-Dakar motor race once passed
through its territory. After the attacks began in 2006, tourism plummeted and
the organizers of Paris-Dakar decided to move the event to South America.

Now, Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad has been granted a grace period after using chemical
weapons on civilians, and Iranian President Hasan Rouhani arrived at the U.N.
as if he were the man the world was looking to for salvation. After they helped
sow terror, Assad and Rouhani may yet receive a medal for liberating us from
it.

In our world, it
seems, anything is possible.

Boaz Bismuth is a columnist and correspondent for Israel
Hayom, whose English-language content is distributed exclusively by JNS.org.

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